EVEXED and MEET for mechanical design: testing structural decomposition and constraint propagation

摘要

In previous work we have developed a model of design which can be summarized as structural decomposition plus constraint propagation, and embodied it in VEXED, a system for circuit design. In this paper we report on work we have done to test the generality of this model of design by abstracting VEXED into a domain independent shell, EVEXED, and using EVEXED to implement MEET, a system for mechanical design. This work demonstrates that the basic model of design can be used for some, but not all, areas of mechanical design. In particular, this approach is not appropriate for design involving parameter selection for primitive parts or design involving large searches. This work also demonstrates the importance of combining multiple models of design to handle different aspects of the same artifact. Finally, it demonstrates the importance of testing ideas about design on multiple tasks and domains.